Breaking up a LPARAM variable & looking at groups of bits

Question

I know that a LPARAM variable has certain bits set(inside it) that identify information such as long key presses & etc. when I receive a WM_KEYDOWN event.

So I a

Answer 1

LPARAM can hold a pointer value, this is important for 64-bit compatibility.

To examine the nth bit (0 is least significant):

if (lParam & (1 << n)) { /*bit set*/ } else { /* bit not set*/ }

To extract it as either 0 or 1:

(lParam >> n) & 1

To extract X bits from position Y:

(lParam >> Y) & ((1<

This works by first shifting the bytes down to the least significant places and creates a X bit wide mask to mask them out.